He Lied, I Thrived Anyway

our childhoods a blur of shared secrets and scraped knees. So when we finally started dating, just a month ago, it felt

my phone. An anonymous post on a local gossip forum caught my eye. The

suspicion, but curiosity. Liam was in the busi

the only one he'd ever felt this way about. She described late-night calls, secret meetings, and gifts he' d bought her. She even posted a picture.

hood friend 'girlfriend' that they were sold out just so he could surprise me. He says he's onl

creen went blurry. I read the sentence again, and then a third time.

rname of the person who wr

ays lingering a little too close to Liam, her eyes a little too po

end, Chloe. You'r

is number. He picked up on the seco

. Miss me

u?" My voice came o

t the library. W

eakers," I said, my voice

d of the line. It was just a seco

d you, they were sold out everywhere

uick, so easy, it knocked the air out o

ne, Liam. From a g

avy, suffocating. I could hear h

ing tone replaced with a nervous edge. "She's just... she's

clingy. That you were only wi

he's making it up. Yo

ght back to a few weeks ago, when my

erious. "I saw him with that Olivia girl at the coffee s

am and I had known each other our whole lives. He would never be

ovesL?" I asked, my v

ce. "I... I don't kno

been, with captions that were inside jokes I didn't understand. A picture of his hand holding hers. And then, the final blow: a photo of them, faces close

, something else was stirring. A slow-burning anger. The shock was starting to wear off, replaced

he dark screen of my phone. The hurt was still there, etched on my face, but my eyes were clear. I wasn't just a hea